Brick Break: Difference between revisions

Martial artists showing they can break bricks and/or boards with a single barehanded blow because they're martial artists. They often [[Kiai]] while doing so.

 

 

The fancy version of this is to break not the first object you hit, but the one behind it, or a specific one in a sequence. Thus demonstrating you have not only brawn, but control. The usual subversion is for someone to hurt their hand after failing to break the boards/bricks. Doing this at various levels of difficulty is often one of the criteria for advancement in rank. This can be taken to [[Up to Eleven]] levels in fiction, where characters are allowed to break the bricks with [[Finger-Poke of Doom|one finger]] or [[Psychic Powers|their minds]] or whatever.

** Ryouga learned a technique later in the series that allowed him to break boulders with a [[Finger-Poke of Doom]].

*** Actually, any kind of solid ''non-living'' matter he could punch his finger through (for starters, he could WRITE on stone by punching holes with his finger prior to mastering this technique), so this is useless used ''directly'' against living things (this doesn't make him shy to explode boulders and open craters ''near'' enemies, though)

** Also, Mr. Satan breaks a stack of tiles to show how powerful he is. (Cell was not impressed.) Also a slight subversion, as he always, without fail, breaks all but ONE brick... which still settles him as a [[Badass Normal]].

* In ''[[Doctor Slump]]'', there's a scene where Suppaman tries to convince Arale that he's impressive by setting up a stack of five clay tiles and breaking three of them with a punch (And boasting about it afterward while holding is sore fist). Arale responds by [[Widget Series|casually punching the Earth and cracking it in half]].

** [[Love Hina]]'s Motoko is capable of cutting objects with her bare hands. She can even cut objects behind other objects without harming the front object. This is a result of her martial arts style, the Shinmei Ryu. Note that this style is practiced by Negima's Setsuna, Eishun, and a few others. Guess why.

* An episode of [[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]] featured a contest where Croagunks had to break several bricks in order to proceed, using the [[Trope Namer|Brick Break]] technique mentioned below. Brock's Croagunk managed to break all of them. Meowth, disguised as a Croagunk, only managed to break his hand.

** Better than that: it was actually a ruse to gain members since the challengers were breaking actual tombstones while the Karate Club were using weaker ones. Kokoa is a superstrong vampire, so this didn't matter.

* In ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'', one of Souther's soldiers demonstrates his strength by breaking a huge rock in half with his head. On the very next page, Kenshiro breaks the man's skull with a single fist.

 

== Literature ==

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** The Block Smash event of the Pokéathlons in ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver|HeartGold and SoulSilver]]'', which involves breaking stacks of cement blocks.

* Kim Kaphwan breaks several boards while they're in the air with his feet in one of his ''[[Capcom vs. SNK 2 Mark of the Millennium|Capcom vs. SNK 2]]'' intros.

** He does one better in his intro in the ''Real Bout [[Fatal Fury]]'' games: he breaks a column of ice blocks with one kick.

* The [[Bonus Round]] in the first ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' was based around breaking rocks in this manner. The "Test your Might" tests were reintroduced in ''Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance'', but dropped thereafter. For the record, it started with wood, then went to stone, steel, ruby and finally diamond.